Still catching up...and the benefits of living next door to the gentry :-)

Well, that was a successful evening. The landlord, one of the family from the estate, is sorting me out some furniture! Brilliant. I was invited up to the castle, to poke around one of the cottages there that has just become vacant, and to have a root in the garage to see if there was anything I'd find useful. So, hopefully a rather nice oak table, some very chunky chests of drawers and another table (to use as a work table - quilting anyone?) should be coming my way, and hopefully chairs to go with the table and maybe even some wardrobes and a sofa too. Lovely. They have more stuff stashed away than DFS, let me tell ya. I'll have to leave it behind if I move out, but I did politely suggest that if I took a real fondness for something, a cheque could be forthcoming, which was greeted very positively, so we'll see. Anyway, furniture. Civilisation at last.

Work is good, although I've not really a lot to do just now. The boss has arranged training in London for next week (honestly, I only just got up here, and now I've got to go back down again) so I think I'll get the train. I don't much care for flying, seems like an awful lot of mess-arsing and waiting about especially with the security nonsense, and you can't knit on the flight because, obviously, knitting needles or crochet hooks are Weapons Of Mass Destruction, so train it is. Takes 5 hours, but by the time I've sat at Glasgow airport for a couple of hours, got on the plane, got down to Heathrow, found my bag (which, give current indications, is likely to be on its way to Karachi) got out of Heathrow (a marathon in itself) and got to where I need to be, I'll be totally fit for nothing and I'd be already in London on the train. :-) So I think I'll go down on the weekend and get a night's kip before the training. Works for me - and I can work on my Sonnet cardi-vest thing en route. Might even have it done for the IKL show in September, if the stars align correctly. If I'm really lucky the train will have Wi-Fi as well.

Just one snag. I just remembered my suitcase is in Staffordshire. Bugger. Have to have a think about that. A quick shopping trip may be in order :-)

I realised I never showed y'all decent pictures of the new stash I got from Skye. These were from Shilasdair, on Waternish and The Handspinner Having Fun in Broadford. So, without further ado:

Shilasdair naturally dyed cashmere / angora / wool:



And handspun, hand dyed cashmere. This stuff I swear is spun from clouds. It is gorgeous. Get some. Seriously.



How about handspun, hand dyed mulberry silk? Or handspun Wensleydale, still in the grease and pretty much straight off the sheep's back?







I also picked up some Rowan Scottish Tweed, because I love it, its green and its tweed (and we all know how much I'm loving the tweed) - and this was the first time I'd seen this colour in a DK weight. I know someone who will heartily disapprove mind, solely because of the colour (yes, you. I know you'd prefer maroon, but they didn't have any, OK? And I like green. So there.)



And this is a lovely soft lambswool / angora in a subtly variegated red. The shades in the skeins are a bit "off" - one is noticeably darker than the others so I'll have to have a think about how to get round that. I cannot be bothered with alternating the skeins!!!



One last thing. If you're thinking of a trip to Skye, Shilasdair is totally worth the trek. You'll think you're going to fall off the end of the peninsula, but believe me, it's there and you won't get your feet wet. Well, not quite. This is why you have to go: